Fei, completely unaware of someone’s prying eyes on her, decides to continue asking the man, “do you go look for food every day?”
“… Yes.”
“Do you know anything about these ruins?”
“I don’t… I… I just look for food.”
Mu Jiashi suddenly asks, “before, we saw someone being pushed off the rooftop of that building far away…”
His words trail off.
Because he can see the strange look the man has. He looks fearful, even.
Mu Jiashi, after pausing, says, “ you know about it.”
He is going to keep asking when the man suddenly yells out, “no! Don’t ask! Don’t ask me!!!” He is flailing his hand about, and holding the bread even more tightly with his other hand, while his pupils are darting around in fear. He even starts running away, as best as he can run with a limp, as he keep yelling, “I know nothing… I know nothing…”
He has made it into the fog.
The Missiontakers want to give chase, but the fog stops them dead.
Mu Jiashi furrows his brows to say, “why did he… Did he know the dead person?” He gives it some thought, and then poses another possibility, “perhaps, he even had something to do with his death, somehow?”
Fei also fell into thought, and follows up, “this is strange…” but then she shakes her head to say, “looks like we won’t get an answer. Let’s hurry to the building instead; see if we can save the man from his death, and…”
“What man?”
That is when Biceps suddenly, blankly asks.
All the Missiontakers’ gazes fall onto him, which merely confounds him.
He asks, “what death? Has anyone died?”
Mu Jiashi is silent for a moment before heaving a weary sigh, and rubbing the crease between his brows as his head throbs.
Baldie simply puts a stop on it, telling him, “we’ll tell you along the way. Let’s go.”
Biceps trusts his brother, and so keeps quiet while following after them. Along the way, Baldie recounts what happened thus far to him.
Biceps remarks with surprise, “I’ve already started to lose my memories?” He voices his curiosity out loud, “I don’t notice anything wrong with my memories at all.”
Hearing that, both Fei and Wu Jian’s looks turn weird for a split second.
Collector’s mouth perks up again. Oho, so the both of them share a secret?
Memories, and fog… What could their secret be?
The other Missiontakers are too preoccupied to think about that, because more and more people are forgetting, which worries Mu Jiashi, saying, “this means, we’ve already got one down and one to go for the people who are going to forget this run.”
Baldie said that the proportion of people losing their memories went up by a third each run; two-thirds on the second run, which translates to four people.
Thus far, Collector, Wu Jian and Biceps are the three people with amnesia. Collector has the worst case, having lost the entirety of his memories of the first run.
And now, at least one of Mu Jiashi, Fei, and Baldie, who still have their memories intact, will lose their memories gradually, starting soon.
Fei looks somewhat pale, remarking, “perhaps, we might have already forgotten something. We just don’t know about it yet.”
Mu Jiashi opens his mouth, but he does not know what to respond. So in the end, he simply asks, “want to do a memory check?”
Fei just whispers, “wouldn’t that be a waste of time… if we have to confirm everything every single time with everyone…”
“You can count me out,” Baldie suddenly interjects, “I am certain my memories are unaffected.”
Everyone gives him inquisitive looks.
Baldie tells them straight to the point, “I used a utility card, with an effect of strengthening my memories. You can expect me to be the last one to lose his memories.”
Mu Jiashi nods and doesn’t ask anything else. Instead, he turns to Fei to say, “so just the two of us. Let’s check our memories?”
Fei looks more hesitant, but still shakes her head. There is an odd fear in her mind against checking her own memories. It makes her feel unsafe, somehow.
Her refusal is the perfect excuse for Collector to speak up, though; with a smile, he asks, “are you sure you’re not just trying to hide the fact that you’ve already lost your memories?”
Fei immediately retorts, “what are you talking about? I just feel like it would waste too much time along the way…”
“But if so, then why did you look so weird earlier?” Collector replies, “not just before, but also when we were talking to the survivor… You looked, well…” He tilts his head, before saying, “frightened?”
Fei falls silent immediately.
Wu Jian looks like he wants to chime in, but Collector immediately targets him instead, asking, “you also know it, don’t you? You’re together… Could you actually know something about this Nightmare, but kept it to your self the whole time? Oh man, poor us…”
He says ‘poor us’ with the most cheerful, excited smile they’ve ever seen on his face.
“… Enough,” Fei sighs. She has a rather grim expression, while nobody else – nobody else but Wu Jian, seems to understand the source of her anxiety. She adds, “I’ll tell you.”
Wu Jian asks in shock, “are you sure? Wouldn’t…”
Fei turns to him to answer, “we’re in a Nightmare.”
Wu Jian immediately shuts up.
Fei almost looks like she is murmuring as she goes, “no matter what… Nightmares have to be solved. They are top priority. And the Tower… maybe they have their attention more on the Tower instead…”
Fei looks up and opens her mouth.
That is when Xü Beijin suddenly realises that the comment barrage on his stream is gone──No, not just the comments, but even the viewers.
The list of viewers on the right had several usernames there, but now, as if they have all disconnected at once, it is showing no names.
Shocked, Xü Beijin wonders, what is going on?